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until 04.11. | #1562ARTatBerlin | Semjon Contemporary shows from 08th September 2017 the exhibition “Photography! A Retrospective Look Forward” by the artist Gerda Schütte.
About 40 years ago, with the rise of digital photography, the Paris-based artist Gerda Schütte laid aside the camera as her working tool – or more precisely the analogous camera – and began working solely with light and light-sensitive paper in the dark room.
Her work is an amazing discovery!
She creates entirely new visual worlds that are not intended to reproduce objects, but become visual and abstract signs and aesthetic experiences. The artist is not interested in returning to the beginnings of photography; the perfectionist prefers to focus on the dynamism of the visual quest. Her oeuvre belongs to the circle of great abstract photography. Recently her works have been featured in some important exhibitions, for example in Alchemie in the Berlin Kulturforum.
Image caption: Gerda Schütte – _GS_2012_Ebullition-1_25,2×10,1_HNS(2)_bea_h23
Analogous Photography
The exhibition Gerda Schütte – Photography! A Retrospective Look Forward, presented in the entire gallery space on her 75th birthday, traces the beginning of her photographic creative activity, showing examples from her work, which illustrate how, from the start of her (then still) photographic activity in 1989, Schütte has been interested in moving beyond figurative photography to define her own process of transforming the depicted content into abstract signs, despite originally working with a nude model. The series Les Signes de vie from 1990 may serve to illustrate how the artist, by use of creative and interpretative means, creates new visual worlds through intentional overexposure, making it difficult to imagine that they were created in close engagement with the model.
Image caption: Gerda Schütte -_GS_2013_PpdL_KontaktVomFotogramm_50x40_h23_JB
Photograms
At the latest since 2002 Gerda Schütte has been working with the photograms and developing successive series, either abstract ones as the series La face cachée des choses, Les précieuses de lumière or Luminosité, distinguished by the reduction of form, or showing vegetal floral motifs (as in the series Spring or the triptych Coquelicot, thus stretching the genre of photography and the technique of the photogram to its limits, making the observers ask themselves whether it may be a watercolour or a drawing they are confronted with. The series of the Ébullitions or the Abysses are a result of her alchemist experiments in the darkroom and leave the observer wondering again how these could be photograms.
Image caption: _GS_2016_Luminosite-1_30x24cm_h23_JB
Teaching Activity and Withdrawal from the Art Market
During her years in Paris, from 1988 to 2011, Gerda Schütte has been teaching photography at Parsons School of Design with little interest in the art market. In fact, she was openly skeptical about the art market and may have consciously withdrawn from Vanity Fair and the pressure of expectation. Nevertheless, she has created an incredible and unique oeuvre, which I, as a friend and colleague, have had the pleasure of accompanying since the 1980ies, and since 2011 as her gallerist!
Vernissage and photo book release: Friday, 08th September 2017, 07:00 – 09:30 p.m.
Finissage: Saturday, 04th November 2017, from 07:00 p.m.
Exhibitionperiod: Friday, 08th September until Saturday, 04th November 2017
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Image caption: _GS_Abysse-5_2014_24x18_HNS_Kor_h23
Exhibition: Gerda Schütte – Fotografie – Eine Rückschau nach vorn – Semjon Contemporary | Contemporary Art – Kunst in Berlin – ART at Berlin
